It’s Friday, May 22, and the chilly sands of Nantasket Beach in Hull are dotted with beach towels and spikeball nets. A small grill is roasting hot dogs near the parking lot. This is “skip day,” a longstanding senior year tradition where Newton students ditch their academic obligations to hang out.

Over the course of the day, as I share snacks and face off in dozens of spikeball games against friends and acquaintances, I can’t help but note the rare togetherness. Looking back at our four years, I cannot recall another time in which hundreds of us have gathered in this way, factionless and judgment-free. 

It’s a perfect high school day, though not at the high school. 

As the school year wraps up, many seniors are chasing this togetherness, reaching for the quintessential end to their high school years. At the same time we are leaving, we are simultaneously leaning into our school spirit. 

But why now? Why did it take four years to get to this one perfect day? 

Throughout my years as a high school student, I have become acquainted with the student body’s general apathy toward school-centered activities. I have witnessed empty rows in the student section at rivalry sports games, and passed by class fundraisers that couldn’t have collected more than some spare change from a Good Samaritan’s pocket. For most of these four years, we have kept to ourselves or our own circles of friends.

My brother is a sophomore and has never once attended a school dance. When I caught him at home on the night of a heavily advertised freshman dance last year, his only explanation for not showing up was that no one else goes. 

This absenteeism lessens slightly in 11th grade. Although there was minimal dancing, attendance was high for junior prom. Even the least spirited souls in my grade briefly showed their faces. 

But when it comes to mass convergence for school events, nothing holds a candle to senior spring. 

It started with “senior assassins,” where over 200 students signed up to shoot each other with water guns for a big cash prize. In my two-week stint as an assassin (before I was ultimately taken out myself), I camped out in classmates’ bushes, made alliances, and devised escape plans with people I had rarely spoken with in the past four years. 

Then there was skip day and “shirt day” (where we proudly wore our future destinations on our chests), senior breakfast, awards and prom night. In all instances, students who had previously not shown up embraced the final opportunities to connect with their class. 

North senior and incoming freshman at the University of Southern California Sadie Mulligan said that the embrace of senior events is a way to honor our first chapters before we turn the page to the unknown. 

“We are dealing with a major switch in our life,” she said. “I have been in the same school system for my entire life, and now I have to move across the country.” 

Yet this final push for class connection is bittersweet. Just as we finally come together as the Class of 2026, we are equally as suddenly pushed apart. This emotional whiplash of unity and separation will inevitably make leaving that much harder. 

I dread this season of separation. Many of my friends I’ve known since kindergarten. With others, our journeys have just begun in the past year. I still don’t know how I will say goodbye to either—they are two sharply distinct types of pain. 

My old friends have been there through thick and thin. They knew me before I knew how to read, stayed friends with me during the awkward middle school years, but in the fall will have to leave my side. Their absence will be like the loss of a piece of myself.

Yet these new friends will be missed too, on a different level. I will mourn the briefness of our closeness. We came together as friends just when the senior class as a whole bonded. Right at the bitter end.

It seems unfair that I should have had such little time with my new friends, just as it seems unfair that our class unity should only happen in the last few months of school. 

In a sense, we did this to ourselves. There is no reason why I couldn’t have introduced myself to classmates earlier, nor why our class as a whole couldn’t have pursued class spirit in earlier years.

There is something about having only a short time left together that makes us appreciate what we have and leads us to hold on tighter to what we are about to lose. We rush to make memories since we know they will soon be just that: memories.

Our perfect day at Nantasket beach was our first as a class and probably will be the last. Although I wish we would have come together sooner, I would never skip out on the beach that day. 

Maya Solomon graduated from Newton North High School in June and will attend Northwestern University in the fall. She is a former sports and features editor for North’s student newspaper, The Newtonite. She can be reached at mayaisolomon@gmail.com.